To the right, is lake Michigan. I can see it through my window. It’s ominous. Nothing can stop it. It’s both life giving and life taking. I can see as far as it will let me and no further than it will allow. It speaks to me with the words of adventure and the sound…
I’ve made a lot of trips between northern Minnesota and northern Michigan. Usually I’m fishing my way across, hunting hex-eating browns and flats-cruising smallies in July, and backwoods muskies in November. By far the fishiest route is U.S. 2 through the Upper Peninsula and across the Mackinac Bridge down into the top of the mitten;…
The familiar tug, the comforting bend of the 7-weight, and another Michigan smallmouth—this one, 17 inches. Not a record, but it came to my net in a peculiar spot in an unaccustomed location; along a stretch of the Kalamazoo River west of Marshall, Michigan, where the tree-lined banks now give way to clear-cut fields and…
Five on six, from sockeye to smallmouth. HANNA PERKINS, BROWN TROUT, BIG HOLE RIVER,MT. PHOTO: AUSTIN TRAYSER KATHRYN HICKMAN, SUMMER STEELHEAD, DEAN RIVER,B.C. PHOTO: JEFF HICKMAN
I woke up Sunday morning with no way to hold my head that didn’t hurt. I contemplated spending the rest of the day staring out the window, imagining fishing trips that never happened. But the cobwebs started to clear, so I figured I might as well go fishing. I loaded a new two-hander in the…